Chapter 127: Scars

Toren Daen

I squinted at the base of Mount Coreshen, not far off in the distance. "You said Mardeth's base was along the base of that mountain," I said to Mawar, who was crouched at my side. "Is it veiled somehow? Covered in an illusion we can't sense?"

Even as the churning flow of the Redwater coursed along our side, I was unable to spot anything remotely resembling a base along the edge.

Mawar tapped her foot, then looked down. "In the canyons ahead," she said. "From what my reports told me, there's an entire network of bases down below. All dedicated to the vicar's research."

I furrowed my brow, looking up at the avian construct circling above. Sensing my unspoken request, Aurora directed her puppet through the setting sky.

The steampunk sparrow wheeled high above, the wings level with Mount Coreshen itself. I see what the retainer speaks of, Aurora transmitted over our bond. An interlocking web of scurrying rats far below. Come and see.

I reached my hand out, brushing my hand against the veins. As I did so, I thought of the experiments Sevren and I had done with such similar cords of condensed energy. I wasn't able to influence those tethers much at all, and I got the sense that was due to the Relictombs themselves rejecting my touch. But these?

Before I could contemplate the possibilities further, images of what Aurora's puppet was perceiving streamed into my head. An eagle-eyed view from the sky slowly overlapped my own sight.

I didn't grow nauseous as I once had. Instead, I focused my perception on the construct. The shattered earth opened up before my eyes, revealing the land in its splendor.

From on high, I truly understood this place as a massive battlefield. On the ground, the canyons looked like naturally-weathered divots snaking their way through the earth at random. The Redwater was simply another river, even if it was toxic and crimson.

Yet from this new perspective, a pattern emerged. Canyons and chasms became straight cuts of spellfire arcing into the land. A hundred and one cuts gouged the miles of earth all around, an age-old battle presenting itself to my eyes. The land looked like a body that had been whipped relentlessly; scars stretching across a sedimentary back. Only one wound still bled red lifeblood: the Redwater, stretching far off into the northwest from whence we came.

This land was a barren corpse.

An asura died here, I thought headily. And these are the signs of their final struggle.

Indeed, Aurora's stern mind said, brushing my own. But that is inconsequential now. Look near the river. See into the chasms.

My vision sharpened under Aurora's touch. My eyes pierced the gloom with lazer-point precision, cutting straight into the deep scars through the rock. And I saw it there.

Along many of the canyon walls, metal platforms were bolted to the walls. Dark, indistinct forms darted all along their lengths like scurrying ants carrying out a mission for their queen. A sense of stale death emanated from the depths.

Found you, I thought, grinning maliciously.

I withdrew my hands from the incorporeal veins, my hands tingling where my lifeforce intermingled with that highway of energy.

"They're up that way in the canyons," I said quietly, pointing a bit to the south. "We need to be careful as we approach."

Sevren nodded, then clicked a button on his little cube. I felt something in the ambient mana shift, then his mana presence vanished like a puff of wind. "I'm ready when you are."

Mawar followed suit, drawing her energy into herself. Once it became reasonably difficult to sense the retainer's energy, I did the same.

All three of us bore silver cores, so it would be difficult for any average mage to detect our cores regardless of stealth. This was just extra assurance.

I withdrew the damaged metal vicar's mask from my dimension ring; the same one Mawar had scarred with her powers. I let it settle over my face, the new straps easy to tie back.

"Let's do this."

—

We approached the edge of the canyons with speed, the wind at our feet. As I got closer, the mana signatures of the many vicars became easier and easier to sense. Their blaring presences pulled me onward like a beacon till I was crouched over the edge of a chasm.

I peered down. A catwalk of dark metal was bolted to the side. Far below, I could see the reflective glint of crimson water coursing slowly through the base like rivulets of blood. No doubt the Redwater bled some of its source into these ditches. Aurora's construct had shrunk from the size of a hawk to that of a sparrow as it clung to my shoulder, peering down as well.

I looked along the catwalk, spotting a vicar up ahead as he walked at a sedate pace. He wore a hood up high that shadowed his face from my sight, even though the sun had already set. His black robes couldn't quite conceal his deathly pale skin.

Where Renea Shorn's skin was light as death, it still somehow seemed healthy and full to my eyes. Yet the arms of this priest looked like that of a living corpse. Sevren moved next to me, but I held my hand up for the two of us to wait.

The vicar passed underneath us, his boots clanking as they plodded over the metal.

Once he passed, I whispered, "Follow me," making sure I tethered the sound to our area with my magic.

I let myself fall. The wind rushed past my masked face as I plummeted toward the deep crimson water below.

As I passed the catwalk, I quested outward with my telekinesis, a flare of white appearing on the railings of the metal. It creaked just barely as I pulled myself, arcing underneath the platform. My boots impacted the wall without even a hint of noise, my psychokinetic pulls keeping my soles lashed to the stone.

Sevren arced down next. With a blur of red, Promise embedded itself into the wall next to me, trailing a taught thin wire. Sevren swung in a bare instant later, holding onto his hairavant wire as Promise's blade kept said wire anchored to the wall. Mawar was the last to reach us. While she wasn't nearly as graceful as Sevren and I, a few tendrils of solidified void wind managed to worm their way into the rock nearby.

I looked at each of them in turn, before whispering, "We're going to follow."

The vicar hadn't gotten far ahead of us, but the way he walked with purpose clued me onto him as a target. As he strode over the metal, I began to walk along the wall underneath his platform, keeping every noise I made muffled and quiet. Mawar followed at a similarly sedate pace, yet the Denoir heir had to let a bit of distance build before quickly removing his dagger and throwing it out again, using that strange wire technique of his to make it change direction midair to embed into the wall once more.

Even as I muffled every sound my companions made, the slow gurgle of the water beneath us would've masked our presence well. But as we slowly trailed this priest, another sound began to scrape at my eardrums.

A horrid, familiar sound. That of buzzing wings and clicking carapace. Of hundreds upon hundreds of chittering bodies working in tandem.

The vicar reached a fork in the canyon. A long, thin pathway opened into the rock at our side that stretched all the way to the canyon floor. Yet overhead, a slathering of stone made this into a cave.

I hesitated for barely a moment before continuing to track this mage from below. The walls of the canyon were lined with lighting artifacts that cast a deep, orange glow across the chasm walls. Shadows danced in our wake as we slowly trailed the man.

And as we entered this cave, the number of mana signatures I sensed picked up exponentially. And so did the buzzing.

I felt my breath leave my lungs as I finally spotted what had been making that horrid, incessant buzzing.

One of the first brushes with death I'd experienced in this world had been when I'd came face to face with an acidbeam hornet nest. The acidbeam queen kept her entire brood under an awful hivemind, coordinating each and every mana-enhanced insect with the force to decimate a squadron of mages with ease. Every hornet could eject acid from their stingers that could eat through even the strongest of mana shrouds, then dissolve those underneath to nothing more than a puddle.

And so I watched as dozens of captive acidbeam hivemothers were lashed to the cavern walls by thick, glowing chains. Their writhing abdomens were hideously large, the mottled green carapace weak and bulbous. Thin tubes of clear material pumped red liquid from the rushing tributary below into vats. Vicars darted back and forth, dunking massive metal syringes into the reserves. I watched as they drew back the plungers. It looked like a man extracting blood from a vein as the vacuumed tubes slowly filled with crimson liquid.

I watched as a hooded priest strolled over to one of the captured hivemothers. The man watched the mana beast shake and squirm, its mandibles chittering in fear and wrath. He seemed to savor the moment, the massive syringe of red water in his hands.

Then he plunged it into the creature's abdomen. The needle pierced the fleshy exterior with a disgusting squelch, sinking deep. The creature screamed loudly, but it immediately cut off as a vicar thrust something into its mandibles that blocked the sound.

Horror trickled through my veins as I watched the massive abdomen slowly change from deep green to a mix of bright emerald and deep bloody red.

"Someone come over here!" the vicar said in a rancid voice. "We need to bleed this one of its contents! Mardeth's going to make the best blithe any of you heathens have ever seen with this new method!"

A few more men stepped up, their forms casting mutated, horrid shadows in the low light. Long, wicked knives flashed under their sleeves.

I felt a mana signature near me flare slightly. My head whipped to the side, seeing Mawar's face seething with deep anger. Around her, void wind popped.

Evidently, the lead vicar could feel it as well. He paused, holding out a hand to halt the other vicars. "Wait. I sense something off."

I snapped a hand out, laying it firmly on Mawar's shoulder. She made eye contact with me, hissing. "They're torturing them," she said angrily. "They shouldn't be caged here!"

Mawar has a soft spot for mana beasts, I reminded myself. Keep that in mind next time.

The vicar slowly walked over, a hunch to his shoulders that told me he was sniffing for blood.

"You need to restrain your mana," I hissed. "We can rip this place apart later. Right now, we can't let ourselves be discovered."

I was surprised by the words I uttered. I had no love for acidbeam hornets. In fact, they were one of the first things to haunt my nightmares for months. There were very few things I despised so utterly.

Yet even these hivemothers did not deserve the tortuous treatment they were getting.

Mawar slowly regained control of her mana, though the short-haired girl glared at me all the while.

The lead vicar paused, tilting his head as Mawar finally withdrew her power. His hood fell down, revealing a balding, corpselike head with eyes too large for the sockets. Two small, onyx horns thrust from the sides of his empty scalp.

"Jorta, your holiness?" one of the other vicars asked, an impatient one with a long knife. "May we continue?"

Jorta's eyes darted around, trying to catch a glimpse of us. I pressed myself flush against the wall so that I was just out of his sight. I pulled Mawar back as well, though Sevren was quick enough to do the same.

"Carry on with what you were doing," he said with a snarl. "I have something I must do."

He stalked away, a fire in his steps that hadn't been there before. I watched him go hesitantly, wondering if we'd been discovered as I ground my teeth. But another spectacle stole my attention away.

The man who had asked the question earlier giggled with glee, then moved toward the hivemother's abdomen with his long knife. He flourished it, observing the monster's soft belly. It had turned a disgusting mix of red and green.

He drew his knife across the skin in a slow, methodic draw. He seemed intoxicated by the action as his fellows followed suit.

Red-tinged green acidic liquid spilled out, familiar to the acidbeam venom I'd faced once before yet also distinct. Mawar's shoulder shook under my firm hand as the hivemother was slowly bled.

It tried to scream, thrashing at its bonds in pain, but whatever the vicar had done to silence it kept it in mute agony. I watched with clenched teeth, a strange feeling twisting my gut. I hated these things. But they did not deserve to be bled like cattle.

Another vicar held a large funnel underneath the wounds, the greenish-red liquid dripping into a clear container. Once it was filled, he scurried off elsewhere as another vicar took his place with a large bottle.

I ground my teeth. "We need to follow those men. See what they're doing with that extract."

Without giving the others time to protest, I began to follow underneath as I had before. All along, I wracked my mind to recall all I knew of blithe.

I knew the base drug was somehow formed from distilled acidbeam paper, but from the vicar's words above, I suspected whatever was being made here was far, far stronger. The waters from the Redwater also weren't a usual ingredient in the concoction.

I felt goosebumps rise along my arms as I considered what this meant. Acidbeam paper only held trace amounts of the original acid. But these vicars were ripping the acid straight from the source.

Above us, the diminished corpses of hivemothers lined the walls. Some were still alive, clearly being milked for their acid. Yet most looked like shriveled husks. I was forcibly reminded of juice pouches from Earth, where they'd slowly deflate as they were drained of their contents. The dull, dead corpses of the hivemothers looked much the same.

Mawar seethed.

We followed the vicar along his trek. I could feel his disgusting joy in his intent.

The chasm split off one more time. This time, instead of into an underground ravine, this was a true cave. The vicar zipped inside, the darkness swallowing him.

But we couldn't trace along underneath any longer. I looked at the ceiling of the cavern, gauging the distance. I waited until the mana signature of the vicar receded far enough.

Then I jumped, twisting myself midair to anchor myself to the ceiling. Sevren and Mawar followed a bare moment later, though the poor Denoir heir was having more trouble keeping himself stable as opposed to the Retainer and I.

I stepped into the cavern, traipsing along the ceiling.

And was immediately struck by a sense of wrongness. A clawing, pervasive touch brushed my core, making me shudder. Mawar had a similar response, her eyes blowing wide. Only the Denoir heir seemed not to notice.

It is here, Aurora said, her sparrow construct–which was tucked into a pocket on my jacket–seeming to wilt in on itself. This is the source.

What do you mean? I asked mentally, taking a breath as I scanned the room nervously. What is here? That strange cloying presence–could I even call it a presence? That wasn't exactly right, was it? It tasted like dead air scraping against the roof of my mouth with rot.

My bond didn't respond. Sevren looked at Mawar and I uncertainly, then mouthed the words, "What is it?"

I shook my head, pushing past my reservations. It didn't matter now. I had bigger priorities.

I slowly shuffled forward along the ceiling. Mawar followed in stilted, jerky movements, her tendrils of void wind no longer graceful and fluid.

The vicar we'd trailed happily poured the contents of his jar into a massive, translucent container. Swirls of red and green mixed like the turbulence of an ocean in huge vats.

So much of that strange blithe, I thought with horror. The massive container cycled through what looked like a distillery setup, a dozen different glass tubes and steaming plates leading toward a final vat. Theoretically, whatever was inside was the finished blithe product.

But what drew my eyes was not far away from those items. A familiar, massive chunk of scarlet crystal glinted in the low light. A stand had been created for the hulking heart-shaped reserve of basilisk blood. Something had been driven into the side… No, two somethings. Dark onyx rods pierced the sides, but I couldn't make out too much from where I was.

The vicar darted away once he had finished pouring the contents of his container into the feed-in tube. Once he was gone, I chanced a few steps along the ceiling, hoping to get a better view of the red crystal. Mawar had guessed it was crucial to Mardeth's plans somehow, and from how it was arrayed alongside the processed red-green blithe, I had a feeling she was correct.

My hand clenched on the hilt of Oath as I took a step forward, but that strange, undeniable sensation gripped my core once more.

My eyes were pulled away from the construction of chemistry to the yawning darkness of the cave beyond.

What happened here, Aurora? I asked, licking my lips. What aren't you telling me?

My bond didn't reply, only folding in on herself more.

"There's something I need to investigate on ahead," I forced out. "I'm going to check it out. But this machine in front of us seems to be part of Mardeth's end goal. I need someone to investigate down below."

Mawar shuddered. "It's… strange. Welcoming and repulsive at once. It's calling to me, I think," she said in a horrified whisper. "I'm going with you, Toren," she said.

"I can't sense anything," Sevren said slowly, his bright hair flashing in the light. "But if anyone here has a chance to decipher what that mechanical contraption is doing, it's me," he said, flaring his mana.

That's right, I realized. My thoughts seemed to be pulled toward the darkness of the cavern beyond. I wasn't thinking at full capacity. Sevren's regalia, Scouring Purpose, would tell him far more from a quick overview than anything either Mawar or I could do.

"Okay," I said with an exhale. "We'll be quick. Stay out of sight, Sevren," I said, holding out a hand. He clasped it momentarily, before orienting toward the amalgamation of glass tubes and puffing fumes.

I looked at Mawar, a sense of quiet dread percolating from my neck all the way down my spine. She looked even more unsure than I.

I forced my indecision out of my mind, then darted along the ceiling. With each step I took, the cloying force redoubled. I grit my teeth as sweat beaded on my forehead.

We ran for several seconds towards that source. The light of the artifacts receded behind us at an unnatural rate, the darkness ahead seeming too deep. Too full.

I slowed to a halt as I reached the end of the cavern, my mouth slowly opening as I gazed upon massive doors of black iron. They were unornamented and devoid of any decoration.

I could taste death on my tongue. Mawar shook by my side.

Aurora finally mustered the energy to speak, her clear, melodic voice piercing my focus. This is where the battle ended, she uttered quietly. Behind these doors is the true source of the Redwater. This, she said, seeming to take a deep breath, Is where a god died. And they met an end violent enough to make the earth itself bleed.

My breath caught in my throat. There are legends and stories of an asuran battle happening here, I thought numbly. They are true. I saw the marks from the sky. Felt the death in the mana. And beyond this door, is there a body?

And suddenly, I felt a new kind of fear suffuse my veins. If the corpse of an asura lay beyond, what was Mardeth planning with it? How did all of these disparate threads tie together?

What was the Vicar of Plague aiming for?

I opened my mouth to speak. To say something. Anything.

But a flash of putrid, familiar mana ripped the words from my mouth. Back from whence we came, I sensed the putrid touch of decay that had seared itself into my memory..

And Sevren's mana flared once; twice, then winked out.